


It's the New and Unforgivable Me

by sweetNsimple



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hastur/Ligur only in passing, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Raphael!Crowley, Religious Discussion, Soft Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 10:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: In every Once Upon A Time that depicted true love, there was suffering and loss.  There was discovery and healing.  The love story of Raphael and Aziraphale was no different.  It just took a little while longer than most.~::~Raphael saw a hint of Aziraphale’s light on the edge of the horizon, lightyears away.  Raphael let go and Fell, lest Raphael hold on too long and Aziraphale Fall as well.Aziraphale’s scream haunted Raphael as they fell, as their holiness flickered away.  Pain and agony became one with them and they felt, somehow, as they hadn’t before, that they deserved to Fall.  They must, or else this would not hurt so much.  And as they believed that they deserved to Fall, they truly transformed into the demon they had been called.





	It's the New and Unforgivable Me

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [是全新的，不可原諒的我啊](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21277754) by [ClaudiaFekete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaudiaFekete/pseuds/ClaudiaFekete)



Before Creation, God created angels and told the angels to take form as they pleased and to be unique from all other angels.  From the angels came God’s inspiration to create all of Life across the Universe that would be.  All of beauty and majesty evolved from the imagination of angels.  That was not to say that the angels themselves were reminiscent at all of anything beautiful or majestic.  To look too closely would be like looking at the edge of the Universe. 

At this time, there was not much in the Universe.  It was long before Lovecraft and Bradbury and Poe, and so it would be impossible to conceptualize the shapes and faces that flittered across the white and blue-hot stars that contained the celestial energies of the Divine.

That was to say, were there living beings within the Universe to gaze upon the angels, those living beings would have no idea how to describe the nightmare that had visited them. 

As there were no living beings yet, the angels found the uniqueness of one another to be breathtaking and, occasionally, had the audacity to fall in love.

_My darling?_   The white-hot star of indescribable features brushed against Raphael, radiating LOVEHOPEADORATIONCONCERN?DEVOTION.  This was before gender and before language, and so their words were not sounds so much as emotions and flashes of light, and they referred to each other by the names they had gifted each other with.  _You seem bothered_.

_Aziraphale_ , Raphael mourned.  _Morningstar and Michael are fighting again.  There is a strange red fire that erupts from Morningstar whenever Michael hurts Lucifer._   Without understanding why,  Raphael was afraid of that fire and felt that it burned more fiercely than any angel did even though red was supposed to be the coolest of flames and white the hottest.  Rapahel had been burned on that fire while healing Morningstar – as they had decided at the first sight of injury that they would be a healer – and it had left an obsidian scar on them that Raphael showed to Aziraphale now.

Aziraphale bathed Raphael in SYMPATHYLOVEWORRY?SUPPORTDETERMINATION.  _I wish you would stop fraternizing with Morningstar and the ones that stay with Morningstar._

_Why?_

The mass of Aziraphale, comparable to an entire solar system though Aziraphale could be a galaxy if they relaxed and stretched, flickered.  _Michael has said that Morningstar has gone too far.  Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Sandalphon, and…  Many angels want Morningstar and Morningstar’s followers to go somewhere else._

_Where else?_

_Somewhere else._

_How has Morningstar gone too far?_ This troubled Raphael.  Morningstar was kind.  Morningstar was the single angel in Creation to have scars, and they were all from Michael.  The pair fought violently, so much so that they had created blackholes and destroyed galaxies.  Raphael had stepped in more than once to shape their destruction into nebulae and star clusters.  Michael always won these fights and Raphael knew why.

Morningstar’s love for Michael and for all angels was so great that Morningstar could not conceive of causing harm. 

_Morningstar asks questions._   Aziraphale churned and spread and waved until Aziraphale and Raphael were one.  Aziraphale patted away the obsidian scar and then washed through Raphael.  They circled each other, a binary star system, and spun lazily and quickly in orbit of only one another.  _There is fear that Morningstar will destroy God’s Creations._

_We are God’s Creations?_ It was a question because Raphael was also saying, _Do they fear that Morningstar will destroy us?_

Aziraphale hesitated.  They danced through inky black space and painted helium and hydrogen and oxygen behind them.  _I hope not._ DESPERATIONNEEDPLEASEDON’TLEAVEME.  _I worry is all, dear.  My better half.  I worry that something terrible is about to happen._

_No matter what,_ Raphael assured – ADORATIONDEVOTIONIWILLNEVERLEAVEYOU – _we will always have each other._ They meshed and mixed until they were one star and no one could hear Raphael’s sentiment, _God created you and me to love each other.  I was made for you._

_And I was made for you_ , Aziraphale returned in a flash of light that was for Raphael alone to interpret. 

It was considered blasphemous to suppose why God had created them.  God would not tell them.  They were thousands of children with the powers and understanding of the Universe, and they were clueless as to what they were supposed to do with it all.  It was like leaving an entire school of children at the playground with no supervision, if things like schools and playgrounds and children were to exist.  Out of a lack of anything else to do, they assigned themselves to guide and protect that which God Created.  Currently, God was creating a planet that would be called Earth in a galaxy that would be known as The Milky Way.  God was giving Earth the undivided attention that God had given every life-giving planet God made and so was unapproachable.  Even The Metatron who spoke for God had nothing to share with the legions and flocks of angels that waited desperately for a purpose.

Aziraphale and Raphael were different.  Aziraphale and Raphael had found purpose in loving one another.  They had also found other, smaller purposes – Aziraphale loved collecting stories from their brethren and Raphael dutifully healed Morningstar of wounds. 

It would be that love that was the center of their coupling that would lead to Raphael’s Falling.

~::~

There was blood of flames and light and meteors as war tore apart the Universe.  Raphael searched frantically for Aziraphale, but the other angel was missing from sight. 

It had begun innocently enough.  Raphael had been with Morningstar and the angels that clung to Morningstar.  Morningstar felt that they knew why there were created, but Michael and Michael’s angels disagreed.  From this disagreement came discourse.  This discourse bred rebellion.

Raphael was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Raphael did not particularly care to understand God and had come to follow Morningstar because Morningstar needed Raphael more.  Needless to say, this was unforgivable to the opposition. 

Michael and Michael’s battalions descended upon Morningstar and Morningstar’s hordes and burned them with weapons and pushed at them.  There was no cliff in the Universe, not one big enough to be discernable to angels, but Raphael knew, somehow, that they were all about to Fall off of something and that the Fall would be very unpleasant. 

Raphael pushed back.  _AZIRAPHALE_ , Raphael screamed, but there was no answer.  Raphael’s brethren were slicing into Raphael. 

_Do not take Aziraphale down with you,_ said Gabriel.

Uriel disagreed.  _Aziraphale is also a traitor to our Lord.  Aziraphale should Fall with all the demons._

Raphael did not know that Michael and Michael’s angels referred to all who disagreed with Michael’s interpretation of God’s Great Plan as “demons”.  What Raphael did know was that they were now considered a demon.

There was no cliff, but angels were Falling.  Their screams echoed within Raphael, reverberating through the entirety of the Universe. 

_Raphael?_   The name came from somewhere far away, rapidly coming closer.  Aziraphale was coming and Aziraphale would meet torment at Uriel’s will.

Raphael only wished to save Aziraphale. 

_Aziraphale tried to stop me,_ Raphael swore.  _Aziraphale has done nothing wrong.  If only I had listened to Aziraphale.  Aziraphale has always believed so faithfully the Great Plan._ This appeased Michael’s forces. 

Michael and Morningstar were wrestling, tearing holes in the fabric of existence, creating thunder and lightning. 

Raphael saw a hint of Aziraphale’s light on the edge of the horizon, lightyears away.  Raphael let go and Fell, lest Raphael hold on too long and Aziraphale Fall as well.

Aziraphale’s scream haunted Raphael as Raphael fell, as their holiness flickered away.  Pain and agony became one with them and they felt, somehow, as they hadn’t before, that they deserved to Fall.  They must, or else this would not hurt so much.  And as they believed that they deserved to Fall, they truly transformed into the demon they had been called.

What angels did not realize was that God had created all things with free will, including angels.  With free will and their ability to shape reality to their liking, angels had the power of self-actualization.  What they believed became true.

No angel Fell during that horrid rebellion because they were evil and God threw them away.  They Fell because their lovers and brethren called them demons and made them believe that someone had to Fall.

Aziraphale stared with thousands of eyes down into the impenetrable depths of the bottom of the Universe and wanted nothing more than to follow.  As they began to slip, as if from the precipice of an icy mountain, they were grabbed and pulled back and comforted by other angels who had lost brethren and lovers.

Aziraphale did not deserve to Fall for the sins of Aziraphale’s other half, Aziraphale was told.  Aziraphale would have to be strong like the rest of them and learn to exist without.

Aziraphale felt that the Universe was very unfair.

_We shall call this, where we angels reside,_ Michael was telling them, _Heaven.  There, where the demons slither in their own filth, shall be Hell.  Heaven is Good and Hell is Bad.  We are Right and they are Wrong._

_It was not much of a fight_ , Gabriel pointed out.  _We pushed and they Fell.  We should have another war so that they do not ever forget that we are stronger._

_Yes, we should,_ agreed thousands of angels. 

Aziraphale agreed to nothing.

_We shall call this future appointment Armageddon_ , The Metatron decreed.  _We shall begin planning._

Aziraphale planned nothing.

The moment there was an Earth and God created Eden, it was decided that someone must protect the Garden of Eden from demons.  Aziraphale offered to be the Guardian of the Eastern Gate.  Aziraphale was praised for this sacrifice of leaving Heaven and taking on a human body that was constricting and messy and fragile.

Aziraphale took the appointment because Heaven was not home and the angels there were not family.  Aziraphale took the appointment because they – a body was created and Aziraphale took the identify of a ‘he’ – were lonely and being lonely on Earth had to be better than being lonely in Heaven.

It was on the sixth day that God Created Adam and Eve.  On the day that God rested, the seventh day that would be known as Sunday, Aziraphale arrived.  What he did not know was that his demon adversary also arrived and watched him from the greenery. 

Aziraphale did not have any expectations of what a demon looked like beyond wondering if he would recognize Raphael and therefore, did not expect a snake-shaped demon.  It was worth noting that he did notice _a_ snake – a red and black serpent with intelligent eyes that often seemed to be where Aziraphale was.  As all the animals in the garden were peaceful, Aziraphale had petted the creature more than once and had wished it a good day, though there was no point in wishing for a good day as all the days were good.  Or, at the least, Aziraphale had been told that all the days were good.

He stood at the Eastern Gate and stared into the sunrise and he was numb in his calcium-rich bones.  Tired of the noise of Adam and Even’s raucous lovemaking, he focused instead on the sound of blood rushing through his veins, the inflation and deflation of his lungs, the _thump-thump_ of his heart.  Blinking his eyes felt heavy and learning to walk took mere seconds and felt impossible for much longer.  He engrossed himself with his human body and sometimes said hello to the snake that watched him.

Perhaps if he had taken himself out of his grief, he could have stopped what happened next.

It was not on the seventh day that Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, but at the beginning of the seventh month when Eve was heavily pregnant with her first child.  Aziraphale heard the Metatron curse snakes and mankind.  He winced in sympathy when Eve was told that all women would suffer true agony in childbirth.  He wanted to question – but the Metatron was the voice of God, and so this must be what God wanted.  He dared not say a word.

Instead, in secret, he gave Adam and Eve his flaming sword.  He had never really wanted it to begin with and they would need fire and protection to survive.

~::~

Aziraphale did not know that God was speaking to no one.  It was Michael who had told Adam and Eve not to eat apples from the Tree of Knowledge as Michael could see that it had grown from a seed of divinity.  Michael discerned from this seed that it was the knowledge of Good and Bad and how to differentiate between them.  Unsure why such divinity was in the center of the Garden, Michael assumed that it was a test for humans and that they would only pass if they never touched the apples.  It was not God who was furious when Adam and Eve gained knowledge and it was not God who gave punishment.

God was never there.

~::~

Aziraphale worried for them, especially the pregnant Eve, and he worried for what would become of the human race if Adam and Even did not survive. 

He heard the slithering of the long, cursed serpent.  Literally cursed, Aziraphale recalled.  The Metatron had said that all snakes must forever crawl on their bellies.  Humans would try to kill the serpent and all its descendants beneath their feet and the serpent would strike them in the heel.

Knowing this, he was somewhat surprised to see the snake transform into a human shape by his side, though he did not turn his head to look.  “Well,” said the human shape – the first word to ever be spoken verbally and in a human language directly at Aziraphale – “that went down like a lead balloon.”

Aziraphale smiled at first before he realized he had not listened closely enough to understand what all those syllables and noises meant.  “Sorry?”

His companion repeated.  The demon had long red ringlets of hair and his eyes were snake’s eyes.  This was the black and red serpent that had followed Aziraphale around.

The angel almost wished to be angry – righteously furious like how Heaven apparently was with Adam and Eve – but could not dredge up the rage.  Aziraphale simply did not anger easily if at all.  He did not even hate Michael for casting out Raphael, who was Aziraphale’s better half.

Those snake eyes looked at him so familiarly that Aziraphale almost felt rude to ask the demon’s name.  He wondered to himself, in the privacy of his own mind – and it was a very small space to contain a galaxy mass of celestial being and thought – if he had known the demon before the Fall.  When he looked just past the demon to the demon’s core, what he saw were solar flares and magma and red giant planets on the verge of a collapse so magnificent that only blackholes could form from it.  If Aziraphale had known the demon before the Fall, he had been warped beyond recognition.

The demon said that his name was Crawly, and Aziraphale ached in a very disappointed and sore way because he had not said that his name was Raphael.  He did not show his pain.

Despairing to be familiar with someone and having little camaraderie with those of Heaven, Aziraphale extended his wing – a miniscule physical manifestation of his Divine nature – to shield his new companion from the first rainfall.  Crawly smelled of smoke and spice.  Aziraphale would learn that this was the seductive scent of evil.  Crawly also smelled of the forest within Eden.

~::~

In Hell, Lucifer – never to be called Morningstar in their presence again – said that they were Evil and Bad and Wrong.  Lucifer was bitter about this and believed that their Creator, God, had allowed Michael and Michael’s legions to cast them out.  God had made them Fall into lakes of liquid fire and the Fall and the flames had twisted them in agonizing ways into unrecognizable monsters.

They were Evil and Bad and Wrong – and if that was what God thought of them and if that was what God wanted, then that was what God was going to _get_.  They would make God _regret_.

And then Lucifer and the Fallen angels he named his Dukes and all the demons, including the one once known as Raphael, wondered what was Evil and Bad and Wrong?  They had no concept of this.  What was a terrible thing to do?  They reminisced on the destructive forces of black holes, on the gravity of stars that sent planets colliding into one another.  That was destructive.  Was destructive Bad? 

Lucifer called to the demon with no name who had once been the angel known as Raphael.  _God has created Earth and humans to occupy it._ Lucifer thought long and hard.  _Go up there and make some Trouble_. 

None of them had any idea what Trouble was.  Was Trouble asking questions?  Was Trouble having different ideations from others?  Was Trouble refusing to fight brethren and lovers and being cast out of Heaven for it?  Was Trouble Falling so that a loved one did not have to?

The nameless demon went up there and tried to figure out what Trouble was.  The nameless demon saw Michael as they spoke to Adam and Eve and quickly took the shape of the nearest creature – a snake. 

Michael promised punishment if Adam and Eve ate an apple. 

What was an apple?

What did it mean to ‘eat’?

Why were they not allowed to eat an apple?

The nameless demon slithered and plotted and pondered.  Well.  If the humans were not meant to do it, then maybe it would be Trouble if they did so anyway –

LOVEDEVOTIONAWERELIEFANGUISHMYLOVE?PLEASELOOKATME.

Aziraphale stood there at the Eastern Gate.  The angel stood in a human shape, small and pale, and was watching a star rise above the horizon.  Even so, the demon recognized the ethereal grace of Aziraphale, their better half, the other star to their binary system.

_Aziraphale?_

But Aziraphale did not answer.  The demon’s voice was warped and harsh, smaller than the sound the wind made as it rustled grass.  Aziraphale could not hear him.  They would have to be as close as human lovers before Aziraphale would be able to hear the demon’s miniscule, wordless voice.

The nameless demon got as close as they dared.  Aziraphale smiled at them.  Aziraphale touched them.  Aziraphale stared at the sunrise and breathed in a strange human way. 

Aziraphale was miserable and fading and _dying_.  They had left Aziraphale up there in what became Heaven because Aziraphale was supposed to be taken care of, was supposed to retain their brightness and innocence and goodness.  Aziraphale was meant to be Good and Right and Holy and _Happy_. 

Aziraphale was sad.

Lucifer told the nameless demon to go up there and make some trouble.  The nameless demon made trouble because they wanted to set Aziraphale free from this place.  If Adam and Eve left the Garden, then so could Aziraphale.

Eve took a long time to tempt.  The nameless demon had little experience with tempting.  The nameless demon learned the art of wordplay and manipulation because of the clever Eve who knew that the Garden of Eden was paradise and that the apple would be the end of all effortless and guileless pleasure. 

When The Metatron punished Adam and Eve, the nameless demon did not also expect to be cursed.  It had little effect on them, though the nameless demon did feel sorry for all the snake-shaped things that would come after.

The Metatron cursed them to crawl.

_Crawl_ , the nameless demon considered.  _I am Crawly_.

They would be forever crawling after Aziraphale, devouring the dust of their affection.

Crawly went to the Eastern Gate and took a man shape.  “Crawly,” he introduced himself when prompted.  _Please know who I am.  Recognize me.  We complete each other._ HOPEANGUISHDESPAIRLOVEADORATION.

“Crawly,” Aziraphale repeated, and then continued with his speech without pause.

ANGUISHDESPAIRSORROWLOSS.

~::~

A thousand years after the Garden of Eden, Crawly found Aziraphale again in Mesopotamia. 

There was an ark and Noah’s family would be safe from the coming storm.

“You can’t kill kids,” Crawly almost begged.  Demons were Bad and Wrong and Evil and God had punished them with agony and horridness.  Aziraphale was not meant to herald the death of hundreds of innocent people and even more animals. 

Aziraphale looked ashamed but had learned from the Fall to question nothing and do as he was told.  He was an unforgiveable coward in that way.

As the flood water reached up to his knees, Crawly made a decision.

“You _won’t_ kill kids.” 

He was Bad and Wrong and Evil and if God wanted to drown everyone in Mesopotamia, then it was Crawly’s duty to make sure that God failed.  Lucifer had said to go up there and make some trouble.

Surely, this was trouble?

It took a series of demonic miracles and blasphemies to construct a raft.  Simply a raft.  His wings would keep everyone dry.

He could only save so many and he brought aboard as many children and expecting mothers as he could.  He kept the panic of everyone else at bay, lest their instinct to survive cause them to destroy the raft or the people on it.

“You know, as a Principality, it is my job to thwart you,” came Aziraphale’s voice.

Crawly hissed.  “As a demon, I don’t care what your job is as long as you stay out of my way.”

He was angry.  He was enraged.  This should not be happening.  Crawly should not have to keep a raft of children and wives afloat over the bloated bodies of their families.

Aziraphale appeared hurt by his ire.  It was as Crawly glared at him that he saw two small children in the angel’s arms.

“Please,” Aziraphale begged.  “Allow me to finish.  It is my job to thwart you…  How I choose to thwart you is up to my own interpretation.”  He glanced at the raft.  It was very large and sturdy and already floating level with Aziraphale’s hip.  “I shall thwart you at a raft-making competition.” 

And then that bloody bastard began pulling boats and rafts of all sizes from other dimensions neighboring their own, hands reaching into cosmic rifts and pulling out wooden structures four or ten times his size.

Crawly hissed in delight.  “That’s _cheating_ , angel.”

“Well, I never said that _I_ was the one making them!  Do keep up, my dear boy.”

_Call me your dear, your darling, your one and only_ , Crawly begged in the tiny space of his human-shaped container.  _Call me your better half, your shining star, your reason for existence_. 

Aziraphale called him ‘dear’ as he pompously declared himself the winner and Crawly wanted then more than ever to enter orbit with Aziraphale and become one being once more.

~::~

They could not save everyone.  They saved almost three hundred lives, however, and kept it a secret from Heaven by virtue of Aziraphale reporting back to the Head Office that he was aboard Noah’s Ark and the only humans there were Noah and his familial relations.  It was not a lie.

~::~

Crowley and Aziraphale stayed with the body of Jesus long after others had left.

“Do you think…”  Aziraphale paused and collected his thoughts.  “Do you think I could be forgiven?”

Crowley frowned.  “What?”

“I –” Aziraphale wiped at his eyes.  His human body produced human tears and his ethereal nature made them Holy.  Crowley reached out and caught a tear on Aziraphale’s cheek.

He was screaming before he was aware that he was in pain.  The scream began in his very center and erupted from his mouth as if a thousand men were screaming at once.  From miles away, humans thought his pain was the never-ending clash of thunder and that God was suffering.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale yelled.  He rushed to use his Grace to heal the blistering and bubbling stump that was left of Crowley’s hand.  Or, at the least, he tried to.

The boiling and oozing stopped, but a stump remained.  Crowley collapsed.

“Oh, no, no, _no_!”  Aziraphale dropped to his knees and pulled the demon into his lap.  “You fool, you fool of a serpent!  What did you do?”  He held the stump between both hands and bowed his head over it.  It was only as he did this that he realized there was no one he could pray to.

No one would answer his prayers for a demon of Hell.

“It’s alright,” Crowley was mumbling, white as a sheet and his ethereal insides careening from pain and shock.  “It’s alright, angel, I’ve got this.  I’ll heal this.” 

The demon Crowley who was once the angel Raphael pressed his hand to the stump of his other and held it there until a new hand began to grow.  Muscles and tendons and bones and skin and fingers and fingernails and even the little hairs on his knuckles came back, little by little.  When he was whole once more, Crowley fainted from the effort.

When he woke up, he was surrounded by the prickling discomfort of Grace and glorious warmth.  His head rested on a sturdy pillow and he breathed in the faint scent of a garden – _the_ Garden – and of sun-warmed stone.  There was that scent of something Good, of something Angel, that was no particular scent at all that Crowley knew to name. 

“Angel?” he murmured. 

Aziraphale’s wings fluttered around him.  “How do you feel?”

“Like Hell.”

“Is that…  Is that good or bad?”

“I dunno.”  Probably bad.  “What happened?”

Aziraphale’s hands were running through his hair, gently taking out tangles.  “My tears are Holy, my dear.  Holier than Holy Water itself.  Oh, you fool…”

“Of _course_.” 

It had not been long ago that Crowley had been told by a messenger of Hell that Holy Water would completely destroy them.  This revelation had sent a panic throughout all of Hell and the number of demons on Earth – easily accessible to the vengeful and merciless angels of Heaven – had dropped significantly.  Crowley was the only demon who lived there and only a handful of demons dared to visit more than a handful of times every decade or so.

Of course, the number of angels had also rapidly decreased.  Holy Water was the destruction of demons and Infernal Flames were the destruction of angels.  Blessed if Crowley knew how Heaven and Hell had come across this knowledge at near the same time.

Aziraphale and Crowley were alone on this small dirty and blue ball flying through space around a somewhat larger star.  Crowley preferred it that way.

What he did not like was finding out that Aziraphale could cry and Crowley could not wipe his tears away.

“Blessed, that you were able to grow your hand back at all.”

Crowley had always had an aptitude for healing.  Always.  He was the first healer.  “Small wonder,” he said.

Aziraphale looked at him with pain as if it had been him who had suffered.

“What’s wrong, angel?”

“What’s wrong?  What’s _wrong_?  My tears can kill you!”  He shut his eyes and bowed his head so that their temples touched.  “I cannot bear to be alone again.  Even if you are a foul fiend, my hereditary enemy, the Creator of the Original Sin, my adversary… I fear your destruction.  And what if you are destroyed at my hands?”

_I would cease to exist happily_ , Crowley thought.  What he said was, “Again?  Hold on, what do you mean ‘alone again’?”  _Tell me about Raphael and I will reveal myself.  Tell me that you’ll do anything to have me back.  Tell me how much you miss me, how much it won’t matter that I’m a demon.  Let me come back, let me love you._

DEVOTIONLOVEDESPERATIONNEEDDESIREHOPE.

As close as they were, temples touching, Aziraphale felt he heard a very distant whisper.  He then decided that it was a very distant memory as he thought he had felt the sentiment of _let me love you_ , and it had felt like Raphael, and Raphael was surely not with him.  This destroyed his will and all the words he had been about to say evaporated. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale whispered.  “I lost someone in the Fall and I can never have them back.”

“Why not?” Crowley pressed.  “They’re probably somewhere around here.  Who was it?  Don’t you want them back more than anything?”

“I can’t have them back.”

“Why not.”

Aziraphale held back tears if only to not accidentally destroy Crowley.  “I’m afraid.”

Crowley closed his eyes.  “Of them?  I understand.  ‘Cause they’re a demon and all now.  All Bad and Wrong and Evil.”  He turned a sob into a derisive snort.  “No one wants _that_.”

Aziraphale’s hands slipped from his hair and clutched fistfuls of sand.  “I’m afraid there can be no forgiveness.”

Crowley’s eyes shot open.  Aziraphale leaned away and tucked his wings back into a neighboring dimension where they would exist without being seen.  His head was turned from Crowley.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale did not answer.  He gently moved Crowley from his lap and stood.  The angel patted his tunic free of sand and walked away.

~::~

Hell was learning how to be Hellish and, as Crowley was their agent on Earth, it was the Creator of the Original Sin himself who was regularly charged with telling Hell what was Bad or Wrong.  The more Hell learned, the more demonic their demons could become and the more terrible the terror they caused.

Crowley sent a memo to Hell and it said this:

_Demons are unforgiveable._

If Hell were to have a list of commandments, this would have ended up in the top five.

~::~

Let it be known that Aziraphale said “There can be no forgiveness.”  With an ambiguous statement such as this, it was hard to say who could not be forgiven and it was understandable that Crowley misconstrued it.

What Crowley, who was once Raphael, did not know was that Aziraphale did not speak of anyone of Hellish descent, but of someone he felt should have Fallen.

~::~

It had been less than ten years since last he saw Crowley and yet he felt he had been looking for the demon in every shadow and on every street corner for centuries.  When he heard Crowley’s voice in that pub, he could not stop himself from coming closer, drawn like an insect to a flame.  He was so very tired of being alone.

“Still a demon?” he asked, not because he thought Crowley would not be a demon but because he could not think of anything else to say after their last disastrous meeting.  Crowley’s angry outburst was understandable and gave Aziraphale no clue on how to communicate with his single friend on Earth.

Humans often talked about what they were doing.  Aziraphale gave it a try and learned that Crowley was in town to tempt people.

And, apparently, Crowley had never had oysters.  “Oh, well, let me tempt you –” Crowley’s body twisted to look directly at him, his eyes hidden behind tiny dark glasses and yet his glee was a formidable presence nonetheless.  “Right.  That’s… your job.”

Crowley sipped his drink with a very peculiar expression of pleasure on his face.  “You know what oysters are for?” he asked.  “You know what it would look like if two men show up at Patronus’s and eat oysters together?” 

Aziraphale, who had only been in Rome for a short amount of time, instantly thought of how familiar and intimate people of Rome were.  He recalled being told that oysters were aphrodisiacs.

He thought of a couple he had seen earlier that day, as a matter of fact, and how the young man attending the older had been licking a path straight down to the older man’s –

“As friends,” he clarified.  “We would be going as friends and it will be no one’s business but our own.”

Crowley looked him up and down and Aziraphale was transported back to that memory but it was a fantasy now.  He was leaning back, his toga mostly undone, and Crowley was laving kisses and speaking tongue against his flesh as he wandered southward with that infernally smug look in his golden gaze, his fangs just grazing pliable flesh –

“Just friends,” he said, and he was almost begging.  He wished suddenly, despairingly, that he had said nothing.

He thought of Raphael and wished that it was Raphael with him.  With Raphael, he would have kissed and licked and made love to as humans were wont to do with lovers. 

This was Crowley and they were friends and Crowley was all Aziraphale had on this Earth. 

Aziraphale reached out and took the glasses from Crowley’s face.  Those snake eyes stared steadily at him and no human took notice because their attention was miraculously elsewhere. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered and took Crowley’s hand.  “Please.”

The demon was silent for a moment before he squeezed Aziraphale’s hand.  “We’ll just eat some oysters, no one’s business what we don’t do with them” he said with a careless shrug.  “Is it really like eating salty snot?”

Aziraphale pouted.  “Well…”

~::~

In 537 AD, Crowley made a nuisance of himself as the Black Knight.

In 1601, Aziraphale used his eyes alone to bribe Crowley into making _Hamlet_ popular.  It was effortless and he felt powerful afterward as Crowley sauntered away even though Aziraphale was the one who had to ride a bloody horse to Edinburgh. 

In 1793, Crowley just happened to be in the area when Aziraphale was arrested and soon to be decapitated.  Aziraphale tried to pretend he was not happy to see the demon.  He tried to pretend that seeing Crowley did not make his day, his year, his existence on Earth even a little bit more bearable.  He tried to pretend that Crowley was only a friend he kept reluctantly.  He tried and lied to himself and took Crowley to get crepes because he didn’t want to be alone and Crowley was more than just a friend.

In 1862, they argued.  Aziraphale could not be Crowley’s downfall.  He refused to bring about his only friend’s destruction!  He said _fraternizing_ and Crowley’s voice was poison as he spat back _fraternizing?_ and it became an ugly word between them at that meeting.  Crowley was not Raphael, Aziraphale told himself.  Crowley was not Raphael and it did not matter what Crowley did.  It didn’t, truly, it shouldn’t, surely, it wouldn’t. 

Holy Water was proof that, at some point in the near or distant future, Crowley expected to get into a fight he wouldn’t be able to win.  Holy Water would _destroy_ him and Aziraphale would be all alone again.  He would miss his friend too much. 

_He is only my friend.  Truly, my_ only _friend_ , Aziraphale thought to himself.  _I cannot be expected to lose my better half and then my only friend in the Universe.  That is too much to ask of me._   The line was blurring.  _I cannot lose Raphael and then Crowley_.  His feelings were meshed and fused and churning.  He could barely differentiate his undying love for Raphael from what he felt for the demon.  _Crowley is only my friend_.

Yet, in the terms of time, Crowley had been his friend longer than he and Raphael had existed together.

He thought of the angel who had been Raphael and who had been the size of a galaxy and a kind healer, who had said that the reason for his existence was Aziraphale. 

He thought of the demon Crowley who had been by his side for thousands of years as they discovered and experienced humanity and who had a wicked sense of humor and beautiful golden eyes.

He thought of the precipice of an icy mountain and wondered if he was slipping… 

It did not matter.  He would not give Holy Water to his friend, to Crowley, who was only his friend and his only friend.  It was better to have an angry Crowley who would not answer his letters and who slept a century out of spite than to have no Crowley at all.

~::~

It was 1941 and Aziraphale had just been forced to face the truth.  Crowley was walking away, expecting the angel to follow.  His books were safe in his arms, the demon having saved them from the from the explosion.  Aziraphale had been saved from being discorporated because of Crowley’s timely intervention – because the demon of Hell had walked on consecrated ground to save Aziraphale from paperwork of all things.  Were his feet burned from it?  Had the pain sharpened from the sensation of walking barefoot on the beach to walking naked on the surface of the sun?  He watched after Crowley – dreamily, lovingly, devotedly – and saw when the demon stumbled and limped and then immediately righted himself to swagger onward. 

He hurried after Crowley, the truth sitting heavily on his chest, atop his shoulders, in the back of his throat, on the tip of his tongue.

_I love you_ , he felt it resonate through him.  _I love you so much._

And it was a betrayal to Raphael because he and Raphael had been made for each other and it was unfair to Crowley because Aziraphale would always have to choose Heaven over him and it was a tragedy for Aziraphale because he truly could never be forgiven, could he? 

He caught up with Crowley before the demon could get in his car.  “Here, let me –”  He kneeled before Crowley and took one shoed foot and then the other in hand.  As an angel left to his own devices for thousands of years, he had become a respectable healer and was pleased when he felt the burns fade away to nothing.  Tired as well, but pleased.

He looked up at Crowley and the demon was watching him with an emotion so strong in his eyes that they glowed from behind his sunglasses.  Or, perhaps, it wasn’t an emotion.  Was it the human expression of Lust? 

Crowley looked at him as if Aziraphale was everything he wanted and Aziraphale did not know what to do with that. 

The angel refused to lean forward and press a kiss to one knobby knee or firm thighs.  He refused.  He couldn’t.

_I want to_ , he thought.  _I will not!_

“C’mon, angel,” Crowley croaked.  He cleared his throat and pulled Aziraphale back to his feet by his elbows.  “Let’s get you home, yeah?”

He almost thanked the demon but stopped himself just in time.  “Yes, please.”  He added, because the words _I love you_ were about to tumble out, “Would you like to join me for some wine?  It is the least I can do.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow at him.  “Sure, angel.  Why the Heaven not?”

~::~

In 1967, Aziraphale went against Heaven and his own desires by giving Crowley Holy Water in a tartan thermos.  In the near or distant future, Crowley was going to use that Holy Water.  It was too dangerous, too painful, too agonizing for Crowley, who would be completely destroyed in the most horrific way known for a demon, and for _Aziraphale_ , who needed to know that Crowley existed somewhere on Earth even if he was on the other side of the planet and Aziraphale didn’t see him for centuries. 

If there was one thing Aziraphale had learned, it was that he could not always have what he wanted.  He could have many things and he could have many joyous memories, but he was not allowed to have Crowley, even more so than he couldn’t have Raphael. 

Yes, at some point in the future, Crowley would use the Holy Water.  Hopefully, it wouldn’t be on himself.  Unfortunately, it probably would be.  Regardless, if Aziraphale gave him the Holy Water, he at least had Crowley for a little while longer.  If Crowley followed through with his plan, if he stole Holy Water from a church and Heaven found out – and they _would_ , especially because he was the Creator of the Original Sin – Crowley would be destroyed immediately.  Aziraphale was not ready to say goodbye.  He was not ready to not have the _chance_ to say goodbye.

He could not have that.  He could not bear it.

He should have realized that Crowley would find out the truth.  Even with his sunglasses, Aziraphale knew that Crowley had figured out his feelings of love and devotion for him.  It was in how he asked “I’ll give you a lift.  Anywhere you want to go.”  And his voice was soft and his mannerism was soft and Aziraphale felt in the energy that crackled between them that if he said _Take me home and make love to me, become one with me, show me that you love me, tell me that you were made for me_ , that Crowley would do so immediately and honestly.  Aziraphale knew of the desire and need and love that flowed from him to Crowley and from Crowley to him.  He had finally acknowledged it a little more than twenty years ago.

He was sure it existed long before then.

“You go to fast for me, Crowley,” he whispered.  And it was true.  Aziraphale was not ready.

He was not ready to say goodbye to Raphael and he was not ready to forgive himself and he was not ready to take that step off the icy mountain he stood on, the one where he kept sliding.  Where, someday, he might Fall.

~::~

Lucifer had told him to go up there and make some trouble.  Crowley eventually figured out how to make trouble by watching humans.  He learned about death and starvation and rape and abuse and stealing and murder and jealousy and rage and pillaging and watching the light leave someone’s eyes because he deemed that their life was worth less than his.  He learned about how to cheat the legal system, how to pay off policemen, how to frame an innocent, how to hide a slave in the 21st Century, how to corrupt a politician.  He learned about using makeup to cover up the bruises, smiles to cover the fear, journal keeping to hide the hateful and blasphemous thoughts.  He discovered shackles and whips and cigarette burns and broken bones and torture devices.  He did not find the Spanish Inquisition, World War I or II, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Black Plague, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Reign of Terror, Al-Qaeda, slavery, pedophilia, the Trail of Tears, or any of the other hundred thousand tragedies that tainted the past, present, or future of humanity – they found him. 

Lucifer had told him to go up there and make some trouble.  Crowley wondered, as he took credit for the trouble that humans made, if Hell thought that he was the most deplorable and tainted and disgusting creature in all of Creation, to do these things to living beings.  They certainly had not caught on that Crowley was lying in his memos.  Crowley told them of Bad and Ugly and Wrong and Painful and all the demons of Hell learned from him.  For the Damned souls they received, the worst were tortured on the landscape of their own souls and the less malevolent were chained to desks and made to do office work for the rest of eternity.  Demons did a great deal of tempting because they knew it was Wrong and Bad when human souls did not go to Heaven and, occasionally, demons did some murder and property damage.  The demons of Hell had a good cackle over the Trouble they were causing and none of them spoke to Crowley, who may or may not be to blame for everything bad that had ever happened on Earth, if they did not have to.

Hastur and Ligur spoke of priests and politicians.  They did not trust him because his memos were far more obscene and unforgivable than any report he made in person.  They needed to know that there would always be a demon that was truly irredeemable, that they could push the boundaries and commit atrocities untold, and they would always be more likeable and less hated than Crowley. 

“It’d be a funny world if demons went around trusting each other,” Ligur said, but it wasn’t true because he and Hastur had been a binary star system before the Fall and they trusted each other with everything.  It was simply what they believed because to not be trustworthy was Wrong and Bad.  Therefore, demons should not be trustworthy.

Demons should also be full of hatred, and so they hated Crowley entirely, who they thought was not only the Creator of the Original Sin, but the Creator of All Sin.

How could they know better? 

Lucifer had told him to go up there and make some trouble.  Crowley, they believed, had caused all the trouble, and had left little for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to do indeed.

They handed over the Anti-Christ and Crowley signed for it.

“Should we have told him not to eat it?” Ligur asked, concerned that the last thing Crowley said to them was the Italian word for “food” according to Hastur.  Crowley had told Hell about cannibalism and there were rumors that the demon had eaten humans while they were still alive.

“It’s the Anti-Christ,” Hastur rebutted.  He looked very uncomfortable.  “I’m sure he knows?”

~::~

Armageddon?

Of course.  Well.  If everything ended, then maybe Aziraphale would not care anymore.

“Our side will win, of course,” he said.  He said it because he was expected to and he was expected to fight and he was expected to be happy about it.

He was not.

If he had been, Crowley never would have talked him into helping him stop the Apocalypse.

~::~

At the bandstand, Crowley said that it was in a demon’s job description to be unforgivable. 

Aziraphale did not know that it was Crowley who had first decreed this and that Crowley had been inspired by Aziraphale long ago before the body of Jesus.

That was why Crowley did not believe Aziraphale there, just outside the bookshop.

“How can someone so clever be so _stupid_?” Crowley begged to know.

Aziraphale looked at him with tender, hurt eyes.  “I forgive you.”

Of course, it was this that Crowley thought Aziraphale to be lying about.  The Universe was ending and Aziraphale would not run away with him.  The angel probably just wanted them to part on better terms.

The lie sent Crowley into a bitter, heartbroken frenzy.

“I won’t even think about you!” he yelled.

He thought of Aziraphale all the way to his apartment, he thought of Aziraphale as he set up his Holy Water trap, he thought of Aziraphale when the angel actually called, and Aziraphale’s bookshop was the first place he went to as soon as he lost Hastur in the answering machine.

The bookshop was burning down and Aziraphale was gone.

~::~

“I lost my best friend,” Crowley sobbed.  Aziraphale’s image wavered and faded before him like a mirage.  He half-believed this to be a side effect of being so fucking drunk that an actual human being would be dead from alcohol poisoning already. 

Aziraphale, wherever he was between dimensions, did not seem able to focus his gaze on Crowley, as if he was looking for the demon by sound alone.  He paused at this admission and sympathy leaked through as he said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Crowley wished Aziraphale would say a little more than that.  Something that showed he knew it was Aziraphale he had lost.  He desired any iota of evidence showing that Aziraphale realized how hard this was on Crowley, who had believed the being he had loved since their moment of Creation to be gone forever, destroyed and forever out of reach.

_I can’t do this anymore_ , Crowley realized.  _I can’t_.

If they made it through this, Crowley was going to sit down with the angel and they were going to talk about the Raphael-shaped elephant in the room.  They were going to address the You-Can’t-Forgive-Me-For-Being-A-Demon-sized whale in the room.  They were going to discuss the We-Obviously-Love-Each-Other-More-Than-We-Actually-Care-For-Heaven-Or-Hell-Or-Else-We-Would-Have-Smote-Each-Other-Millennia-Ago-sized star in the matchbox. 

_I can’t lose him again_ , Crowley thought.  He drove his burning carcass of a Bentley through a ring of Infernal Flames and he imagined everything was perfectly fine.  It had to be or else he would never see his angel again.  This was their last chance to stop Armageddon and have a future that wasn’t them eyeing each other down on the warfront.

_Bless it all, angel_ , he thought bitterly to himself.  _Why couldn’t you just run away with me?_

~::~

The most shocking part of the apocalypse was when it didn’t happen.

Aziraphale went home that night with Crowley, still in disbelief.  He glanced at the demon from the corner of his eye.  How many times had Crowley said he was leaving?  How many times had Aziraphale said that they weren’t even friends, that he didn’t even _like_ Crowley?  How many times had they lied and hurt each other?

They silently went up to Crowley’s apartment.  The demon took an anxious look about, stalking from room to room as if something was wrong.  As far as Aziraphale could see, there was nothing out of place.  This only put the demon more on edge and he led Aziraphale to his bedroom with weary glances all about.  The door locked behind them.

Aziraphale stared at the bed.  Unlike Aziraphale who did not even bother to own a bed – he did not see the purpose of sleeping – Crowley had a very large and well-used bed.  Stylish and expensive, of course, but the blankets were mussed and there was an air around it of contentment and peace that spoke of long hours of rest and comfort.

Arms wrapped around his waist and cool, chapped lips touched his jaw.  “We’re on our side now, angel,” Crowley whispered, so gently and tenderly.  “We don’t have to worry about Heaven or Hell, angels and demons.  We can just be us.  We can have just us.  Please don’t say I’m still going too fast.  We can have this and it’ll be good.” 

The demon’s hands quivered against his belly.  He held Aziraphale as if he were afraid the angel would fly right out the window.

Aziraphale almost relaxed.  Then he felt the sentiment of _My better half_ and thought it was a memory from a time with Raphael. He shut his eyes tightly.  “It won’t be.”

Pressed together as close as they were, he felt Crowley flinch.

“I love you,” he admitted.  “And I am a coward.  These are the things I cannot forgive myself for.”

“You can’t – for loving me?  Wait, hold on – _Yourself_?  You can’t forgive _yourself_?”  A misunderstanding Crowley had had over two thousand years ago suddenly squared itself away and made everything that much worse.

“It is unforgiveable.”  He and Raphael had said that they were made to love each other.  “I wish I didn’t feel this way.”

Crowley stumbled away.  “Do you really hate that I’m a demon so _much_?” 

It was then that Aziraphale realized they were having two different conversations.  He whipped around.  “No!  No, my dear boy, not that.  I – ” angels were not meant to say it, but, “I hate _myself_.”  He sobbed and kept himself away from Crowley as the tears fell.  “Raphael Fell and I just stood back and watched.  I wanted to Fall too, do you see?  Oh, but how could you understand?  Raphael was my everything, my better half, my reason for existing – and I was not there to save Raphael from Falling and I wish I would have followed, but I was _scared_ and I was a _coward_ and I hate myself!  I feel as if I have been slipping since that time, sliding down the face of a mountain, always moments away from Hell, but it never happens.  I remain an angel and my Raphael is somewhere in Hell, a demon, and I never even got to say goodbye.”  He crumpled into himself.  A ragged, pale mess on Crowley’s spotless floors.  “I was made to love Raphael and Raphael was made for me and yet, _here I am_ , and I love you and the thought of losing you is too painful to bear, but I cannot bear to have you either as that would mean betraying Raphael.  I am truly terrible, a horrendous angel.”

In a fit of rage against himself, he drew out his wings and tore feathers of Grace and Divinity from them, scattering them all across Crowley’s bedroom and the Universe.  Small, bitter miracles happened on distant planets where his feathers touched.

“Angel, no, STOP!”  Crowley grabbed his tear-stained hands and –

And kissed him.  There, on his lips tasting of salt.

Crowley did not burn.

_I don’t understand_ , Aziraphale thought, but then he was distracted by something else, something other, something familiar there just behind Crowley’s lips that he needed to taste for himself.  Aziraphale’s tongue touched Crowley’s and he tasted sentiment and light and heat and remembered a language that was without words.

LOVEDEVOTIONANGUISHPAINSORROWPLEASEDON’THURTYOURSELFSTAYWITHME.

Crowley’s mouth touched him softly, then again, and then again and deeper and pushed Aziraphale down so that he could pin the angel’s bloodied and wet hands above his head, keep them there so they could cause no more harm to the one he loved.  He straddled the angel’s thighs and bore his weight down on him to keep him still.

LOVEMEREMEMBERMEIHAVEALWAYSBEENHEREIFORGIVEYOUPLEASEDON’THURTYOURSELF.

_I don’t understand_ , Aziraphale thought again, though maybe he did.

_Please_ , whispered a despairing voice from very far away, as silent as the gentlest wind through blades of grass.  _All I wanted was to keep you safe.  All I wanted was to keep you safe.  All I wanted was to be with you._

Aziraphale would have gasped if he had air to do it.  He had forgotten to breathe for as long as Crowley had been kissing him, tasting Holy tears and miraculously surviving.  The smoke and spice of the demon was imprinted on the angel now and it was seductive.  “Raphael?”

“I know I should have told you,” Crowley sobbed.  “And I wanted to so many times.  But you never – you said there could be no forgiveness and I thought you hated _me_.  I thought you couldn’t accept me as I am.  And then – and then I knew you loved me, but I couldn’t be sure if you’d want me if I told you who I really was.  You loved me, but you always acted as if you wished you didn’t.  I just – _fuck_ – I don’t know how to tell you that I was afraid.  I was afraid.  _I_ was the coward.  I didn’t want you to leave me.”

“You left me behind!” Aziraphale yelled.  “You fuCKING BASTARD!”  He screeched and it was the noise of rage that had been simmering in a teakettle for thousands of years and had just reached boiling.  “If I were a violent angel, I would be beating you half to destruction right now.  I would, oh, I _would_ , you believe me.  You!  You!  And you knew this whole time.  I have been in pain, aching from your loss, disgusted with myself for wanting someone else, and that someone else was you all along.  Is this what it truly means to be a demon – to cause the one who was made to love you endless suffering?”

“You think it was a walk in the park for me?  I was made to love you and there you were, always by my side, and any time I thought we’d talk about it, thought we’d come together again, there you went careening off in a panic.”  Crowley was not necessarily known for his patience and he grit his teeth and hissed through them.  “I Fell and went to Hell and I had the write the bloody instruction manual on what it even _meant_ to be a demon and the only thing that made it worth it, the only thing that makes this whole blessed Universe bearable, was being able to walk beside you.”  His words softened.  His thumbs fluttered over the sensitive inner wrists caught in his grasp.  “I was made to love you and then I fell in love with you all over again.”

“Well, that’s all tickety-boo and such,” Aziraphale snapped, teeth bared.  “As long as you suffered, I suppose we’re equal, hm?”

“I don’t know how else to say that I was fucking terrified of what you would do if I told you the truth!”  Crowley groaned in frustration.  “You’re saying you’re unforgivable ‘cause you’re a coward – well, maybe I am too.  Can we be unforgivably cowardice together?  Can we?”

Aziraphale clenched his jaw, which pursed his lips, and his eyes narrowed, and he looked righteously furious like he might materialize his long-gone flaming sword from thin air and smite Crowley with it.

“Please, I’m sorry,” Crowley whispered.  “I was scared.  I couldn’t bear to lose you.  What if I told you and you went back to Heaven?  I can’t go there, angel.  You’d be gone forever.”

“I would _never_ –”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“You know me!”

“I thought I did!”  He looked sorrowfully at the gaping holes Aziraphale had torn into his own wings.  “Turns out I didn’t.  I never knew that you blamed yourself.  I thought you blamed me.  I just – didn’t think you’d take me back.  You never talked about me.”

“I talked about you all the time?”

“Not to _me_.”

“I assure you, the topic of my wily adversary came up quite often at the Head Office.”

“No!  Not the me _now_.  The old me.  The – the Raphael me.” 

Aziraphale swallowed thickly.  “It hurt too much.  There was that time, in Rome, where you were talking about what men liked to do and what oysters were for, and I thought of us – you as a demon – like that, intimate and sexual, and it hurt so much because I realized that I did not think of Raphael first.  How could I speak of Raphael, the being I was created for, to Crowley, the demon I was falling in love with?  I have felt like a traitor to myself for millennia and I could only even admit the truth to myself when you walked on consecrated ground for me.”

“Angel,” he said.  Unsure of what to follow with, he released Aziraphale’s wrists and drifted his palms over the injured wings.  Being creations of ethereal energy and stardust, it was not easy to repair them if not absolutely exhausting.

“Please don’t,” the angel whispered.  “They will heal in time.” 

“Not good enough.”

Aziraphale now caught his wrists and held them to his chest above where his human heart beat.  The angel’s eyes gazed up at him and, holding both thin wrists in one hand, he used the other to relieve Crowley of his glasses. 

“Part of why I cannot forgive myself,” Aziraphale said, “is because I was made for Raphael and I thought I fell in love with someone else.  That is because of you.  Because you are Raphael and I was made for you and you are wicked and smart and wily and so very good to me.  On some fundamental level, I must have always known who you really were.  On a conscious level, I had no idea.  I hated myself for betraying you for _you_.  That is why I am so, so _furious_ with you.” 

He sighed.  “And the other part is because you Fell and I…  I didn’t follow.  I almost did.  I was right there at the edge.  Other angels pulled me back, said that you had made your choice and that I was an angel of the Lord, I didn’t have to Fall…  In reality, I could have still Fallen.  If I had really wanted to, they could never have stopped me.  In the time between then and now, the only thing that has stopped me is my own cowardice.  I didn’t want to Fall.  I still don’t want to Fall.” 

Aziraphale pushed his wings back into their interdimensional pocket of space.  Out of sight, out of mind.  They hurt and throbbed and he wanted to keep that pain, needed to keep that focus.

“I’m scared of Falling.  I don’t want to be Damned, Crowley.”

Crowley looked down at him.  “I don’t want you to Fall either, angel.”

“You should!  Then we could be together.” 

“Why can’t we be together now?”

This gave Aziraphale pause.  “Because I’m an angel and you’re a demon.  We would probably explode if we tried to unite.  If we became one like we used to.  I’m still trying to figure out why you’re not already destroyed from practically drinking my tears.  Foul Fiend.” 

“I’ve drunk your tears,” Crowley began like a sermon.  “I’ve licked inside your mouth.  Your blood is on my hands.”  He got lost in thought for a moment.  “You’re in love with me and that changes everything.  That’s what you said, yeah?  You admitted to yourself that you loved me eighty years ago.  And you were made to love me.  Wouldn’t do much good if you were made to hurt me, now would it?”

“If that were so, my tears never would have hurt you.”

“You didn’t know I was Raphael back then and you didn’t fully love me as Crowley.  It’s a big difference.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“Don’t get me to explain all this to you ‘cause I don’t think it’s meant to make sense.  What if it’s just meant to _be_.  What if we’re meant to be.”

“Then you wasted six thousand years of our existence by not telling me who you really were.”  Aziraphale held onto his indignation and anger for a few long moments that began to make Crowley feel like he should remove himself from Aziraphale’s person and prepare to be smote. 

Unexpectedly, Aziraphale deflated.  “I wasted that time too.  I wanted to ask you – I wanted Raphael to _be_ you – but I didn’t dare.  I never had the nerve.  I couldn’t forgive myself for not stopping them from making you Fall.  I couldn’t forgive myself for not Falling with you.  If – If you can forgive me for that…  Maybe I can forgive you.  Maybe I do understand, just a bit, about being too afraid to tell the truth.”

“Forgive you?”  Crowley shook his head.  “Angel, I never _blamed_ you.  I – there’s something you need to know.  Uriel and Sandalphon and their lot, they were pushing me to Fall and I called for you and.  You know them, you know they’re right bastards.  You’ve got to know that.  I called your name and they said that you were a traitor as well.  They were going to make you Fall too.  I couldn’t let them, I couldn’t let them kick you out and send you wherever they were sending the rest of us.  I couldn’t let God punish you for something I did.  I told them you were innocent, that you did your best by me and then, when I saw you, and you were so far away, but I _saw_ you – I let go.  I Fell to save you from Falling.”

Aziraphale was crying very silently.  “I needed you.”

“Feeling’s mutual.”

“I needed you so much.  The moment there was a post open anywhere other than Heaven, I took it.  I needed to get away from all of them.  I needed you.”

Crowley’s bottom lip wobbled and he bit it to make it stop.  “Lucifer told me to go up to the surface and make some trouble.”  He laughed and it was a painful wet sound.  “You were there and you didn’t recognize me at _all_.  And you were so sad.  You were so sad.  I hated Heaven and all its angels for not taking better care of you.  I gave you up and it felt like, the next time I saw you, you were wasting away to nothing and giving up on existing.  I had to get you out of the Garden, give you a reason to grow and thrive.  I needed you, but more than anything else, I needed you to be _happy_.”

“I was happiest with you,” Aziraphale complained.  “I still am happiest with you.”

“I forgive you,” Crowley said.  “I forgive you for not Falling.  Easiest thing I’ve done in my whole existence, except for loving you.  That’s effortless.  I was made for that.  Forgiving you?  Second easiest.  There’s nothing to forgive.”

Slowly but surely, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s shoulders and pulled him down.  It was a featherlight kiss he gave to Crowley, across his forehead, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, each risqué cheekbone, his chin, and then, with longing, his lips.

“I am still so angry and upset,” he admitted.  “I forgive you.  I will never forget, but I can forgive you.” 

Crowley let himself sag more weightily against his angel.  “You don’t even have to forgive.  Just don’t send me away.  Don’t say I’m going too fast.  Say you can’t forgive me, but you love me anyway.”

“You old fool,” Aziraphale muttered.  “I love you.  I loved you.  I will always love you.”

“ _Aziraphale_.”

They kissed and tongues met and –

LOVEDEVOTIONPAINCOMFORTRELIEFADORATIONANGERFORGIVENESS.

Crowley ran his fingertips down Aziraphale’s jaw, along his throat, discarding bowtie and pushing suspenders and jacket out of the way.  Aziraphale wormed himself free of tangled fabric and tasted the smoke and spice of demon flesh, tasted rich cologne and the dust of the past day.  There was salt and sulfur and sunlight. 

He was particularly enamored with the dip between chin and bottom lip.  How Crowley searched for more kisses made him shiver, and the caress of cool, chapped lips and warm, exciting skin at once pleased his hedonistic tendencies for robust flavors and pleasing textures.

NEEDDESIREPASSIONLUST?WANTMORENEEDMORENAKED?WARMFAMILIARYES.

_Make us one,_ Aziraphale thought.  They might explode, being an angel and demon and such.

It would be worth it.

_Takes two,_ Crowley pointed out, and they smiled into their next kiss so that teeth got in the way and it was sloppy and glorious. 

Within the small confines of the tiny human body, it was very difficult to take the Heavenly essence of the one and the Hellish essence of the other and mash them together without accidentally destroying the galaxy they were in as well as the Andromeda Galaxy – the galaxy closest to the Milky Way. 

_We’ll be careful,_ Aziraphale swore.  _So very careful.  You should always be careful, the first time you make love._

_We’ve made love like this before,_ Crowley returned.  _We practically existed like this before –_ but they did not want to talk about that anymore, so they shied from the word and the painful memories attached to it.  _Been a long time, though_ , he allowed.  He had opened Aziraphale shirt all the way down to where it was tucked into his pants.  There was, of course, an undershirt.  _What the Heaven, you wear so many clothes._

_It’s proper._

_It’s a bloody nuisance is what it is._

Crowley’s sentiment and wordless dialogue were still so quiet and in such strange wavelengths that Aziraphale felt he was straining to hear and listening to a voice much too deep and rattling to be Crowley’s, if the way they were communicating could be said to include voices.

Too ecstatic to have Crowley this way again, Aziraphale simply dealt with straining and felt every emotion and desire hungrily.

_I feel the edges of you_ , Aziraphale whined.  His hands had slipped under the hem of Crowley’s shirt and he was feeling the muscles and soft skin of the demon’s back.  _Oh, it really_ is _you._ The magma and red giants and solar flares felt more familiar as Aziraphale became one with them.  It felt like destruction and pain and hardship.

Aziraphale seeped in and brought with him forgiveness and kindness and relief.  The landscape of their intertwined beings, contained within Crowley’s bedroom and miraculously not setting anything on fire as they burned as bright as a very tiny star, changed and reformed and reshaped.  What was ugly in its ruin – not just in the demon, but in both – became like kintsugi pottery.  Where their individual cracks and sharp edges were, their pieces were put in places where they fit – mixing and matching with parts of Crowley fitting in Aziraphale and likewise – and gold light fused them together. 

LOVEDEVOTIONADORATIONRELIEFCOMFORTNOPAINNEEDDESIRELUSTLOVE.

_You feel so good_ , Crowley thought, and it was a loud, confident resonance instead of a frail one.

_You complete me, my better half,_ Aziraphale cried. 

DESIRELUSTLOVENEEDWANTBUILDINGAROUSALPLEASUREEUPHORIA.

_This is different_! Aziraphale exclaimed.  There was a tight ball of tension building and it felt strangely good.

_I think our human bodies are doing a thing_ , Crowley muttered.  The essence of Heaven and Hell were mixing in the spaces between electrons, causing as small of disruptions as possible.  Anything bigger and they might accidentally discorporate themselves. 

Crowley pulled back only a little bit from their melding of cosmic influence to get a look at what was causing a sex-like sensation of approaching climax.

He returned to Aziraphale and they mixed and meshed until they were one being.

_Oh_ , they thought.  _Our silly human bodies.  How primitive_.  They swirled and danced and touched each other’s scars with love. 

They saw that they were guilty of getting all snakes cursed to crawl on their bellies.  _We’ll be kind to snakes_ , they decided.

They saw that they had never spoken up against Heaven, even for crimes against humanity like Sodom and Gomorrah.  The cities had been reduced to salt and nothingness and how were they expected to evacuate all the innocents with so little warning?  _We are guilty of that_ , they admitted and were sad.  _We’ll do better in the future_.

They saw that they felt guilty for all of humanity’s crimes – World War I and II, the Massacre of Innocents, the Trail of Tears, human slavery, child pornography, Al-Qaeda, the Black Plague, Starvation, Disease, rape, abuse, corrupt cops, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, self-serving priests, pollution,  and another hundred thousand things that humanity said were caused by the Devil, but the Devil had not been to the surface in millennia and the Devil acted on Earth through their servant Crowley, and Crowley had done none of this.

Crowley was a part of them and they knew that they were not guilty and that made them feel worse.  Sad for humanity that did not need to be nudged to hurt one another.

They saw miracles and peace and acts of kindness.  They saw homeless men give away their last five dollars to make sure a child did not go hungry.  They saw groups of people come together to clean out a river, to plant trees, to support change, to bring change, _I have a Dream_ , they saw change occur, saw happy children in happy homes, saw growth in the beaten and broken and watched them rise anew and proud.  They saw recovery and new life and acceptance and good people who did good things.  They had met Wangari Maathai, Jane Goodall, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Frederick Banting.

Oh, the world was full of terrible and bad things.  But it had good in it as well.  It was a balance. 

They soothed their guilt and found forgiveness for their oneself. 

EUPHORIALUSTAROUSALPRESSUREPLEASURECLOSE.

_Human bodies are demanding,_ they decided.  They considered dismissing sexual arousal.

They stopped their oneself.

_This could be fun.  We have never done this before.  We can have this together._

It was a slow process, separating themselves.  New lines had to be drawn in the metaphorical sand of where Aziraphale ended and Crowley began.  Their ethereal selves had to be tucked back into their tiny human compartments, which had sought to be as united as their ethereal forms.

Something might have gotten a bit confused as they settled back into human bodies.  Crowley watched his own face as it screwed up in pleasure.  “I look ridiculous,” he hissed and could not quite stop his hips from continuing to thrust into tight, slick heat. 

“Oh, oh, oh –” said Crowley’s voice, but it wasn’t Crowley.  “Oh, please, don’t stop.  We were right, this is so good.  Oh, this is _brilliant_ – _yes_!”  Scrawny legs wrapped around his thick waist and pulled him deeper.  “Don’t stop, don’t stop, this is _incredible_.”

Crowley took a moment to look at his hand.  It definitely was not the one he was used to.  “Oi, what did that prophecy say about choosing your face?”

“Crowley, I _swear_ , focus!”  His hands scrabbled down Crowley’s back – or, actually, his own back.  It was very confusing to Crowley, who had expected to be in his Crowley body.  He would not mind enjoying what was currently going on if he could figure out how to work the hips that currently belonged to him.  They were not quite as loose as the ones he was used to. 

“You realize that I’m fucking you with your own body, right?”

“And if you stop, I will _destroy_ you,” the angel in the demon’s body promised.  There was something of his divine righteousness shining in those golden snake eyes.

“This is actually kind of sexy,” Crowley muttered.  “Threaten me again, I think it does something for me.”  On a hunch, he stopped moving.

Aziraphale did not threaten him.  Instead, he wailed as if Crowley had just denied him a signed, first edition copy of a Jane Austen book.  Except slightly more sexual.

“Oh, Satan,” Crowley breathed.  “That _definitely_ does it for me.  Is it weird that I’m getting turned on by myself?”  He touched his chest and his soft belly and his soft, white-blonde hair. 

Without quite meaning to, he made love very vigorously to his better half.  “Fuck it,” he rasped, leaning down and kissing Aziraphale, open-mouthed and sloppy.  “I’ve wanted this for too long.  I’m just going to take it.”

“Yes, do that,” Aziraphale pleaded.  “Do that, take it, take me, _oh_ , I understand now why humans do this all the time.  I feel it, I feel _you_.”  He ran his hands through Crowley’s pale hair.  “Now, that’s a strange thought – that’s me.  I feel _me_.”  He arched into Crowley, cried out for all of Earth to hear, and came on both their bellies and chests.

Aziraphale flopped back against the bed – when had they gotten in the bed? – and watched him with parted, swollen lips, with half-open eyes, with flushed cheeks. 

“I never really thought I’d watch _myself_ come,” Crowley grouched, though he still found the essence of Aziraphale behind his human face compelling. 

“Mm,” Aziraphale agreed.  “You are wearing the body that has contained me for six thousand years and I am wearing yours.”  He traced sigils and forgotten languages across Crowley’s chest and over his shoulders.  “We are one being.  Created for one another.  If you think about it, our human bodies are equivalent to clothing, and don’t some devoted couples share clothing?”

“You’ve no problem with getting buggered by yourself?” Crowley asked, gasping, as Aziraphale rose to meet his thrusts, squeezing around him, legs pushing and pulling.  Having reached his own climax, Aziraphale was now single-mindedly leading Crowley to his own. 

“I see you,” Aziraphale feel.  “I feel myself, my skin, my penis, and my hair – but I see _you_.  I see my better half, my darling, my dearheart, my dear boy.  I see the love of my existence, the reason for my being, my partner in all things.”

Crowley whimpered.  His hips stuttered.  Aziraphale smiled and it was self-satisfied and coy.

“I see you and there is something else.  I can touch you as I see fit and you cannot stop me.”  Aziraphale touched _himself_ now, the body that had been Crowley’s up until a disgraceful few minutes ago.  His long-fingered hands tweaked small nipples, trailed up and down a taut belly.  Aziraphale made a delicious sound of discovery when he smeared cum on his fingers and licked them.

“You are scrumptious, my dear.”

Crowley yelled as he came inside Aziraphale and collapsed on top of him, deadweight.

“There, there,” Aziraphale soothed.  He wrapped a shivering Crowley up in his arms and rubbed his back.  “That was incredible, my love.  I definitely would not object to doing that again.  And soon!”

There was a blissful moment of silence.

Crowley began counting.  “3… 2… 1…”

“FACES!”  Aziraphale leaped out of bed – a very uncomfortable experience for Crowley, who had still been inside of him and on top of him – and skidded into the bathroom.  Crowley was left sprawled half on the bed and halfway to the floor.

“Agnes Nutter’s last prophecy!”

Crowley set himself back up on the pillows.  Aziraphale skidded back in.

“Y’know, it’s odd to see myself looking so innocent and excited.” 

“This is how we are going to outsmart Heaven and Hell, Crowley.”  He was pacing excitedly back and forth by the foot of the bed, still naked and deplorably wet with semen. 

“For sure, yeah.”

“Agnes Nutter must have foreseen that they would catch up to us and that the only way we will survive this is if we are mistaken for one another.  Hellfire won’t harm you, Crowley.”

“And Holy Water won’t do you any damage,” Crowley added.  Aziraphale frowned.  “If Hell catches me, they’ll probably boil me.  It’s what I did to Ligur when he and Hastur showed up.” 

“You used the Holy Water?  Wait, of course you did.  I saw it.”  They had shared millennia of memories.  “You’re right.  I will go as you and survive the Holy Water and you go as me.  If we do this just right, Heaven and Hell will believe that we have transcended to a new level of being and will leave us alone for fear of what we will do or become.” 

“What if we don’t do this right?”

Aziraphale gave him a pitying look.  “Then we’ll be found out and destroyed anyway.  If not worse.”

Crowley had no desire to find out what ‘worse’ was, so he didn’t ask. 

“Wait a moment.”  Aziraphale ceased his pacing.  “There is something in here.  Some… instinct, I believe.”  Aziraphale’s face scrunched up as he toyed with Crowley’s body.

It took a moment for him to realize what Aziraphale must have discovered.  “Wait, angel, _no_ –”

A giant black-and-red snake slammed against the ground.  Startled, it stared in Crowley’s direction.  “I ssseee,” hissed the serpent.  More curious than alarmed, Aziraphale began the arduous undertaking of slithering around the room. 

After Aziraphale had been under the bed for a few minutes, Crowley cleared his throat.  “Having fun down there?” he asked.

There was an embarrassed silence.

“You had a rat problem,” said the serpent.

“I’ve got pests?  Ah, well, it’s a big enough place, I don’t mind a few rats.” 

“You _had_ a rat problem.”

“What did you do, angel?”

“It wasssss inssstinct!”

Helplessly, Crowley began to laugh.

Naked in an unfamiliar body, his better half prowling the floor for rodents, and the hope that they just might make it out of this alive created an ambient, warm feeling in his human-shaped container. 

He was happy.  He had everything he had ever wanted and he was happy.  And if anyone, Heaven or Hell, tried to take away that happiness?

The opposite of healing was harm and Crowley the demon, once known as Raphael the angel, was geared to do maximum damage on anyone who dared be so bloody stupid.

His bets were on Gabriel, that smarmy arsehole. 

~::~

LOVEDEVOTIONFREEDOMPEACECONTENTMENT.

“To the world.”

“To the _world_.”

_To us._

~::~

Aziraphale thought he had locked the front door.  Therefore, he was somewhat irked to hear it open and the cheery warning of the bell.  “Sorry, we’re closing.”

It was a young lady in too-big clothing.  Somewhere from her person, American music was playing at a low level, though still loud enough for Aziraphale to hear.

_When all is said and done,_

_You’ll believe God is a woman,_

_And I, I feel it after midnight…_

“Then I got here right in time!”  She was a tiny thing swimming in her hoodie and baggy jeans, crowned by an afro of tight black curls.  She had vitiligo and Aziraphale took a second to admire the wing-shaped patch of pink skin that started on her jaw and arched up to her temple. 

She smiled and Aziraphale smiled back by virtue of being encompassed by her love.  This was a human who found joy in all places.  Warmed by her presence, Aziraphale paused what he was doing.  “Actually, I mean that the shop is closing down for good.  I am retiring with my... _husband_ to South Downs.” 

“You lucky dog,” she said.  “You’re glowing.” 

Aziraphale, who knew this to be a turn of phrase, merely smiled and shuffled in place, shy and coy.  Unknown to him, he was actually glowing.

“What’s it like, to love someone so much that you just up and move from everything you’ve built?”

There was something whimsical in her voice, something that made him consider the question seriously instead of giving some paltry answer meant to get her out of the shop as quickly as possible.  “I will miss this bookshop, of course, but…  But it does not feel like I am leaving behind everything I have built.  The relationship I have with him, the love we share, that is something we have built together and it will be with us always.  And, well, the books.  They’re coming with us.  Not much will change except where we are.” 

“You really love him, then?”

Aziraphale smiled the softest, gentlest smile that lit his eyes up and dispelled shadows from all corners of the bookshop.  “I do.  I have throughout my entire existence.”

“You were made for each other.”  She stated it as if she knew this to be indisputable.  She stated it as if she wanted _him_ to know that this was absolute.

It confused him and his radiant happiness turned to a quizzical frown.  “I’m sorry, who did you say you were?”

“Oh, hey.”  She pulled out a cellphone from Heaven knew where and touched something on the screen.  “I’ve actually got to go.  Nice talking to you, Aziraphale!”

“Forgive me, what –”

Quicker than he expected, she was out the door and, when he sprinted to catch up, long out of sight. 

Aziraphale gazed over Soho traffic and tried to make sense of what had just happened.  When it dawned on him, he tremored in shock.  “God?” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> There are more than likely inaccuracies as I have not read the Bible and used Google instead. The scene in Mesopotamia where Crowley saves children was inspired by a short story found on Tumblr at the link https://raindaydecaf.tumblr.com/post/185677767164/aziraphale-hanging-out-on-noahs-ark-watching-the.   
> The short of it is that I love Crowley as Raphael. I love this idea and so I will do my best to make this tag grow.  
> I also enjoy Hastur and Ligur and wanted them to have a guest appearance.


End file.
